legend of lover's forest
by stanzas
Summary: the world they couldn't see, because two silly children stumbled upon their memories and brought them back to life. / pjoshipweeks ;; week two: silenacharlie


_**summary**_: the world they couldn't see, because two silly children stumbled upon their memories and brought them back to life ;; silenacharlie

_**a/n**_- _dios mio_ i really should get these pjoshipweek fics done earlier, i've been posting them all on the last day of the ship week, lmao. don't ask about the cheesiness of this okay.  
also i changed the title like 2390o235948803 times and blah just ignore me ya bye  
edit: HOLy CHEESE THIS IS MY 50th STORY LET'S HAVE A PARTY

* * *

**_legend of lover's forest_**

* * *

_Quietly, as if trying not to disturb the air around them, his arm shot forward and grabbed the box. Everything went quiet. as if the entire camp was holding it's breath in anticipation.  
"Piper give it back-" his sharp cry brought reality back into turn, and the girl with him stifled a giggle. "You been writing in a diary, repair boy?"_

_"I'm gonna-" He made a lunge and the two of them toppled head over heels, laughing hysterically. The boy clutched his ribs from laughter and the girl, Piper, poked her hand in the box. She rummaged around a while before bringing out a set of photographs._

_"Who's this, Leo?"  
Leo urged forward and then froze in place, like he'd just been doused with cold water._

_"Piper," his tone was urgent. "We need to put this back."  
They'd been fishing around Leo's bed to find the iPod he'd accidentally dropped in the side moments before. And then they'd found the box._

_She glanced at him and how serious his tone had become. "Why?"_

_"That was Beckendorf's."  
The air stilled again, and Piper shivered, the air suddenly felt cold._

_Both of them glanced at the wooden box, and then the faded photographs with a girl's winning smile in each picture, dark hair, and a dark skinned boy next to her, matching her smile. Piper pushed the pictures back inside and they shoved it back in the hidden spot it had been sitting previously under his bunk. Leo bit his lip nervously and she just tried for a smile and said "Aw, we'll find that old thing eventually. C'mon, dinner time for the repair boy."_

_He managed to smile, but something was still bugging him about the box. "Right. Let's go."_

* * *

Charlie opened his eyes and saw her sitting next to him.

He could have done a million things, hugged her, kissed her, maybe even spun her around, but he was in too much shock to notice. She moved first, quicker than he expected, and tackled him into a hug. Then she burst into tears.

"Silena-" he started to say.

"Nonono, it's all my fault," she wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and nearly choked him. "You're dead and it's all my fault-"

"It's not your fault," now he was a little irritated. "I'm not dead."

She pulled back a little. "But Percy -"

"I'm _fine_," he told her firmly. "We're both here. We're alive."  
Silena sniffled a little. "I should be dead too. The drakon should have-"  
It was hard to hide the awe and exasperation in his voice; "_Drakon_?"

She bit her lip and glanced around anxiously and avoided his question. "Where are we? Camp?"  
"Don't remember how we got here, I'm just happy I'm with you," Charlie blinked around and saw campers milling around camp, some faces he recognized, others he didn't. Most of them seemed to be ignoring them.

"Do you remember anything?" Silena asked.

"Bits and pieces," he admitted. "What about you?"  
Silena bit her lip again and then spilled. The pact with Luke, her being the spy of Kronos, her guilt about Charlie's death, and then the battle with the drakon she lost badly and should be dead because of it. She tried her best to keep her tone even because she felt like falling to pieces again; but she managed. It wasn't the easiest story to tell.

He told her about the last mission with Percy, how he forced Percy to leave without him, and the terrified look on his face when he realized Beckendorf didn't intend on leaving the ship in one piece.

"Then how are we alive?" Charlie asked after they'd pretty much told everything they remembered. "That explosion should have killed me." He looked down at his arms and legs as if checking if it was all there, and he didn't notice any burn marks.

"Miracle?" Silena suggested, although he heard the clear doubt in her voice. "I should have been burned by the drakon's poison, but I look fine." Her eyes watched the campers carefully as if trying to figure out what was going on. Off in the distance they spotted a familiar face, one to talk to; Annabeth.

"Annabeth!" Silena grabbed his hand and they ran down the little village of cabins (had there always been that many?) to the spot Annabeth was standing, talking with two other campers Charlie didn't know. One of them was scrawny, his hands waving erratically, and his brown curls bouncing on his forehead with excitement. The girl next to him looked bored, twirling the tip of her braid from her choppy hair and gazing off in the direction of Charlie and Silena.

Silena started talking immediately to the daughter of Athena; "Annabeth, we're kinda lost, we were wondering if you could explain what's going-"

Annabeth kept talking to the shorter boy, as if scolding him, and rudely ignored Silena's question as if she hadn't heard it. Charlie frowned as he tried to listen, but Annabeth's voice sounded warped, like she was speaking underwater.

"What's going on?" Silena demanded, a little louder. She waved a hand in Annabeth's face, which the blonde girl also ignored. She went to shake her shoulder when Annabeth moved and walked right towards them- and right through Silena. Then she kept normally walking, leaving a horrified Silena.  
"We're dead," she said, the realization making her voice shake. "Oh Charlie, we're dead..."

To prove the point they moved on to the other campers, shaking their hands in their faces, yelling until their throats felt hoarse, but no one seemed to notice them. Either this was a sick joke or they were stuck in the realm of the dead and caught so they couldn't enter the underworld and into paradise.

Charlie briefly remembered Elysium. He hadn't told Silena, but mostly that it was white, and he had talked once to the son of Hades there, who asked him a few questions before moving on. Now he was back at Camp, which made him wonder what had happened. It also made him worry.  
Silena was getting more and more frustrated with the lack of response from the campers. "Why can't they hear us?"

"Probably because they're not dead," Charlie mused. She slapped his arm, and that was actual contact; they could touch each other, talk to each other, but not with anybody else. All the people talking around them sounded strange, like they were speaking a different language, and neither of them could quite figure out what anybody was saying.

Then they heard it, very clearly. "-_dammit_ Piper, I don't need sleep!" An exasperated sigh, and a huff of annoyance. He met Silena's eyes and they bolted for the voices.

The girl and boy that had been talking to Annabeth earlier were talking outside the forges. The guy was rubbing his eyes tiredly at the girl, who said with a lot more force than Charlie would have thought; "Gods almighty, Leo, if you don't sleep tonight I'm going to strap you to your bunk and leave you there all night!"

"My cabin will stop you, I am their brave and fearless leader that they follow loyally." His tone sounded unsure, more jokingly.  
Her eyes narrowed at him. "No, they'll let me, because Nyssa said the same thing-" Charlie gaped, his sister was still alive? - "-and they like me more than you."

"Pssh. Lies."

"Want to find out?" She cocked her head to the side and put her hand over the forge door as if to stop him from entering. "I have a feeling I'm going to win this argument."  
Leo sighed in defeat. "Alright, you win this round. You better watch your back though, I know how to melt marshmallows right into your pillow. Then I'll eat some, and you'll be stuck to your bed."

"I hardly doubt the physics of a marshmallow can contain me."

"You're right, I'll need super-mallows. Titanium bond."

She wrinkled her nose. "Now you aren't making any sense, which means it's time for bed." She pushed him away from the door and grabbed him by the hair, making him yelp. "Sleepy time for Valdez."

"-_gaah_! Piper McLean, let go of my precious hair this insta- _oooow_!" He winced and struggled to release himself from her iron grip, while the girl dragged him away from the forges. Silena and Charlie looked at each other before following them.

"Bed," Piper shoved him into cabin ten, right into his bunk. Charlie stared. "That was my bed," he murmured. "Which means-"

Leo huffed, and pushed Piper out of the cabin. "Alright, my loyal companions! Lights out in ten minutes!"

...Leo was the cabin counselor.

Silena shook her head. "Wasn't Jake supposed to be the next-?"  
Whatever she was going to say was cut short when Jake himself walked into the room, limping slightly, but grinned at Leo's excessive hand waving. He said something to Leo, but Charlie nor Silena understood a word of it, but Leo nodded like that made perfect sense to him. Whatever was going on, the two of them could only understand Leo and Piper, and that was about it. They were still invisible to everyone around it.

"Well man, a war deadline hanging over your head does little to ease my sleeping troubles," Leo rolled into his bunk. "Turn off the lights for me?"

With a nod and a half smile, Jake hobbled into a separate room to tell the rest of the cabin it was lights out. With his brother distracted, Leo hopped out of the bunk and sent it down the rotation below to his private bedroom, grabbed his coat, and walked out of the cabin silently.

Charlie watched his half-brother exit the cabin and locked eyes with Silena. "I'm going to follow this guy," he told her. "You follow the girl. We have to figure out what's going on."

"Charlie-"

"It'll be fine, Silena." He kissed her once and then headed after the suspicious son of Hephaestus. "Find that other girl!"

"Centaur poop," Silena crossed her arms. "Be safe!"

He was already halfway to the forest, and didn't hear her. Silena huffed and started heading towards the Aphrodite cabin, the direction she had seen Piper head before cabin nine's lights out.

* * *

Leo seemed to be heading into the forest, which worried Charlie for several reasons. He vaguely remembered the dragon he'd taken care of, and without his help...it would have run freely in the woods. Plus there were other things in the woods, monsters, traps... this Leo kid must have been insane.

Turns out he was half right; once they were out of sight of the cabins, Leo unstretched his hand and flames flickered dimly across his fingertips. Charlie yelped; what the Hades-?

Leo cursed as he tripped over a fallen tree, then hopped onto a path Charlie had never seen before, twisting and winding and leading them deeper into the woods, until Leo came to a sudden stop. Charlie nearly walked into him, if it weren't for the fact he would have gone right through him. He pressed his palm to the door and it blazed on his fingers, and the door slid open. Leo walked inside and Charlie followed.

Inside, it was any Hephaestus' kid paradise. Tools, machines, half started mechanical systems, screws and any kind of material imaginable scattered all over the place. Leo set down his coat and made his way to the giant sculpture seated in the middle of the room, bows and arches with what looked like the beginning of a ship.

"I'm home," Leo clapped his hands a few times, and the lights flickered. A table moved forward brandishing a glass of what looked like lemonade, and Leo waved it off. "Not now, Buford. Where's my map?" The drawer popped open and a sheet roughly the side of a car popped out, and Leo snatched it up out of the air. "Ah, wonderful. Now to work." He spread out the paper out across the floor and inspected it, making measurements against the start of the massive hull, and clapped his hands together. "Right. Bronze."

Charlie leaned over and marveled at the design. It was roughly 200 feet long, which was huge; and how was one demigod supposed to build all that? There were increments for cannons and ballistae, which made him wonder what the ship was for. War bearing, obviously...what war?

Leo hummed a Rolling Stones song under his breath, massively off-key, and started climbing through the tanglement of wires in the center of the hull; a pulsing mass of chemicals and energy that said _danger! danger!_ in his mind. He hoped whatever Silena was doing wasn't as dangerous as this.

"Friggin' prophecy," he heard Leo mutter under his breath, sticking a pencil between his teeth to mark places on the boards where the mast would go. "Friggin' Hera, friggin' Roman camp, friggin' missing Percy Jackson-"  
He paused with his measurements. "What's lighter than bronze that would fit for a mast?"

"Wood," Charlie snorted, because he was thinking of pirate ships and wooden masts. Leo spun around and nearly toasted Charlie with a direct bolt of fire.

"Holy Hephaestus!" Charlie jumped and said some other words stronger than his father's name. Leo went on high alert, his hands spread out and ready to fire. "Who's there?" Leo demanded.

"Woah, you can hear me?" Charlie stepped forward from behind what looked like the finished product of a captain's quarters, back into the line of fire. "Can you actually _hear_ me?"

Leo narrowed his eyes. "Of course I can hear you, are you mute? And how in Tartarus did you get into here?"

"Followed you," Charlie wondered if Leo could see him too. "Then walked through the wall."

The other Hephaestus kid just stared at him like he was debating throwing another flamethrower at him, and Charlie put his hands up in surrender. "Sorry for scaring you, so far everyone here can't hear us."

"Us?" Leo put his hands up again to defend himself from whatever he thought was going to attack.. "Is this one of Gaea's tricks, because if you destroy my ship I will-"

_C-CRREAK!_

Charlie might have had a heart attack if he could. Before he hadn't noticed the giant mast head in the prow of the ship, which had somehow turned around to face them. The giant head stuck itself right in front of Charlie, puffing steam, and creaked happily.  
Leo walked towards him warily. "Who's this, Festus?" he patted the dragon's scales gently, like the heat had no affect on him.

"I'm Charles," Charlie said. "Charles Beckendorf."

* * *

Silena found Piper sitting in the Aphrodite cabin, doing roll call, and calling lights out. New cabin counselor, Silena appraised her and thought how different Piper looked. Drew was near the corner, pouting and glaring pointedly at Piper.

"Alright, everyone done with showers?" Piper asked. A chorus of '_yes', 'yep_', and '_yeah's_ all across the room. "Good. Everyone hit the hay, I'll be right out."

Piper went for the shower and everyone else quieted down and started nodded off to sleep. Silena followed her into the bathroom, while Piper got her towel and turned the knobs. Heavy steam started to fill the room and Silena debated leaving, while the other Aphrodite girl hummed to herself and undid the clips in her hair.

Suddenly Piper grabbed her hand and stifled a scream. She wiped the fog off the mirror and spun around brandishing a knife that nearly went through Silena's middle. Piper stared at her like she was looking at a ghost (which wasn't far off) and said in a trembling voice; "Who are you?"

Silena blinked. "You can see me?"

"V-very faintly," she indicated to the fog in the room that was giving Silena a more physical appearance. "W-who are you?"

"Silena." She said. "Beauregard."

It was hard to say who looked more surprised, because Piper dropped her dagger and backed away from her a little. "I- you're _dead_."

"I know." Silena said wearily.

"Can..can anyone else see you?" She sounded spooked out of her mind, poor girl.

"Just you. Me and Charlie can't hear anyone else except you and that other Hephaestus boy."

Piper cocked an eyebrow. "Leo?"

"Yes." Silena hesitated. "Do you mind explaining what's going on? We just showed up here at camp, and we don't know why."  
Piper paled even more. "Oh no," she put her hands on her head. "Oh no," she said again, weakly.

"What?" Silena asked, and the steam in the room was starting to get humid. Neither of them noticed.

"Earlier today, Leo was rummaging around his bunk and found an old box of things..." Piper said. "You're back because of us. Oh gods."

* * *

Leo made a gulping noise. "Beckendorf? As in, _the_ Beckendorf, the old cabin ten counselor who died like, less than a year ago? For the love of Hades, I really hate ghosts," the tips of his hair sparked as if they were close to catching on fire.

"Ghost is a discrimination," Charlie said. "I'm not really here. More like- a memory. Did something happen where you and your friend Piper might have disturbed us somehow?"

* * *

Piper was running towards the bunker, Silena close behind her, her footsteps never making a sound. Piper's feet came in contact with the ground and snapped branches and crunched leaves, her ghostly partner seamlessly trailing behind her.

* * *

"-Percy's _missing_?" Charlie interrupted half way through Leo's rushed explanation of what had been going around camp recently. "And what's with the prophecy- and this giant war ship?"

"War with Gaea," Leo's eyes darkened. "Less than five months, I'm off to Greece to be royally executed to the mother of the earth."

"_Dude_," Charlie said. "That _blows_."

* * *

Piper pounded on the bunker door loudly, Silena waiting patiently beside her.

* * *

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

"Leo, open up!" Piper's voice came from outside, and Leo hopped off the side of the ship. Festus nuzzled Charlie affectionately before Charlie followed the other to the door. Outside, Piper looked breathless, and a nearly invisible girl stood next to her.

"Charlie," Silena said. Leo and Piper just stared at each other and Piper said "Dammit Valdez, stop dragging me into all your weird crap!"

"Hey," Leo retorted. "I didn't start this. _You're_ the one who opened the box. Now we have to send Casper and his girlfriend back to wherever ghosts go or I'm going to go crazy."

"Hey wait," Silena tried to stop their planning, and Charlie just took her hand. She didn't want to go to the Underworld, because she was sure she'd never make it to Elysium after all the horrible things she had done. He shook his head and let the two other half-siblings take care of it.

"-maybe if I burn it-"

"Leo, not every problem can be solved by torching it-"

"Well, it works for me most of the time!"

"-maybe if we buried it, let it go to rest..."

* * *

Turns out Piper's idea was what they eventually went through with. Leo snuck back into his cabin to grab the box, and Piper waited with Silena and Charlie right outside the bunker.

Piper managed a smile. "So, the new counselors not what you expected?"

"No," both of them admitted. "I just hope you guys don't screw up too badly," Charlie said, and Silena laughed. Piper smirked and glanced in the direction of Leo's path. "If anyone's going to screw up, it'll be me or Leo. Nothing to worry about."

Leo returned, breathless. "Hate to put a damper on this cozy counselor reunion, but I think a harpy saw me, so let's hurry this up before me and Beauty Queen become lunch."

"Late night snack," Piper corrected.

"I'd just rather not be eaten," Leo urged. "So, bury it?"  
Silena and Charlie locked eyes. "Yes."

"Okay then," Leo dug into the forest soil and Piper helped hesitantly, and when they'd dug about half a foot, Leo dropped it in unceremoniously. He looked at Silena and Charlie, and felt a pang in his chest. "Hope to see you guys on the other side someday," he said.

"Just not too soon," Piper added. "I have a clueless boyfriend to take care of in the meantime."

"Damn straight, Jason is like a lost puppy without you." Leo pushed some dirt in with the tip of his shoe. "You guys write or something, okay? Well, I dunno about ghostly letters..."  
Beckendorf and Silena smiled at them once, and slowly their silhouettes faded. Piper pressed down on the dirt to pack it in, and then the spirits left for good.

* * *

_There was a legend, started by two old Aphrodite and Hephaestus counselors (the so acclaimed Piper McLean and her friend Leo Valdez), about the lovers of the forest. The story was they died some time during the infamous second Titan war, and how the counselors had come across a box with their old souls inside it and awakened their spirits._

_It was said they wandered among the living, stuck between here and the underworld, and spoke to certain special counselors of those cabins when they appeared. Although harmless, the only damage is the slight panic attack for the poor boy or girl happening to see them in a mirror, or through the fog, or even through the smoke..._

_Lover's forest is as dangerous as it was in the day, monsters lurking and darkness at every corner, but somewhere, buried along with the bunker and much of the giant war history, lies the box that ties them here._

_At night, if you look from cabins nine or ten, some swear to see the two lovers still wandering the forest, laughing and talking, invisible to the world and it's people inside. As the legend goes..._

_...they remain in the woods to this day, as the love they had never truly left._


End file.
